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(Photo: AP/Ross D. Franklin) GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Prescott, Valley, Arizona, on October 4. rules-logo-109.jpeg D onald Trump’s racially tinged calls for his backers to “watch” voters in “certain areas” lest the election be “rigged” against him have alarmed voting-rights advocates, who are mobilizing thousands of volunteers to protect voters from Election Day harassment and obstruction. The League of Women Voters “has been pretty concerned about these statements, because of the chance of intimidation and discrimination,” says Lloyd Leonard, the League’s senior advocacy director. The League is one of several voting-rights groups rounding up volunteers to help to forestall disruptions or challenges at the polls, which could lead at least to long lines, and at worst to voter suppression. With his dark warnings that “a lot of bad things happen” and that his supporters should “go check out areas”—read African American and Latino neighborhoods—to...

AP Photo/John Locher Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attends a campaign rally, Wednesday, September 28, 2016, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. rules-logo-109.jpeg D onald Trump has ditched any semblance of self-restraint with his renewed attacks on his Democratic rival as “Crooked Hillary,” but it’s Trump’s own apparent legal violations that are increasingly making the news. After months of breathless reports about the conflicts posed by the Clinton Foundation when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, a string of disclosures involving the Donald J. Trump Foundation point to multiple clear-cut tax and campaign-finance violations. Watchdogs and congressional Democrats have asked the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service to investigate, and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has already launched a probe. Trump has dismissed the New York inquiry as politically motivated, and his campaign aides say he has followed all applicable laws. But there are signs...

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is sworn in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, September 21, 2016, prior to testifying before the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment hearing. rules-logo-109.jpeg F rom the upside-down perspective of Republicans, the biggest threat to American democracy comes not from the millions in unregulated, undisclosed money sloshing through campaigns, but from the slightest attempt to shed light on the big donors funding secretive political groups. So alarmed are conservatives by the specter that non-disclosing groups will be politically harassed and intimidated that they have set out to impeach Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen. It's a move that worries GOP leaders, but that has fired up the right-leaning House Freedom Caucus. It all goes back to a federal Inspector General's finding in 2013 that the IRS had improperly targeted tax-exempt Tea Party groups for special scrutiny. At a hearing before his...

AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File Senator Bernie Sanders speaks during the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. rules-logo-109.jpeg O n August 24, Senator Bernie Sanders stood before a crowd of supporters gathered in a community arts space in Burlington, Vermont, to unveil the next phase of his progressive movement. “Tonight I want to introduce you to a new, independent nonprofit organization that is called Our Revolution, which is inspired by the historic Bernie 2016 presidential campaign,” said Sanders at the event, which was livestreamed to some 300,000 supporters. The group, Sanders declared, “will be fighting at the grassroots level for changes in their local school boards, in their city councils, in their state legislatures and in their representation in Washington.” But the enthusiastic applause that greeted Sanders in Burlington contrasted sharply with the messy controversies and bad press dogging Our Revolution even before its official launch. On the same...

(Photo: AP/Carolyn Kaster) Hillary Clinton speaks to the media at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York on August 18. rules-logo-109.jpeg T his summer’s never-ending Democratic email disclosures have shed an increasingly unflattering light on the privileged relationship that big donors enjoy with Hillary Clinton and with party officials. Major Clinton Foundation contributors sought and in some cases received expedited meetings with Clinton when she served as secretary of state, according to the latest batch of emails released by the conservative group Judicial Watch. The July WikiLeaks release of Democratic National Committee emails also detailed the special rewards , such as VIP roundtables and receptions, that party officials showered on top-tier contributors. The disclosures have been jarring on several fronts. The DNC emails enraged backers of Bernie Sanders not only because they revealed how top party officials sought to sabotage his primary challenge to Clinton, but...